Journeyman

Weren't you my journeyman

Didn't we watch the stars together

Didn't we map the world together

Weren't you my journeyman

When we set sails together

For ages we rode the vast uncharted sea

You still remember the oldest fragments of me

You should be able to see patterns, pictures

I should be able to see constellations

We should still be charting the seas

Somehow we both wandered

Somehow we lost ourselves

Among the islands

Weren't you my journeyman then

Weren't you always

What happened to us

When the falling snow draped the landscape

When the northern lights were what lit our way

When the mist tried so desperately to lead us astray

We navigated together

Through reefs and cliffs

Cleaving the waves

Journeyman,

We could have been saved

You should have held on to every silver key

When I drifted, you should have held on to me

I can't trust a journeyman who'll let me drift

Who'll let the winds carry me away

Did you know I lost everything

In those storms

Did you notice,

Journeyman?

What have we become by now but caricatures

Hardened hearts and dying desires

Drenched in salt and scorched by fires

What have we become by now but stone

Stone statues with memories of old days

Carved into our withering hands

Weren't you my journeyman

Didn't you explore the fields with me

Didn't we search the forests and hills

Before we wandered, before we lost ourselves

Didn't we laugh together, and gaze at the glimmering, frozen water

Weren't we on the same crew, the same ship

Hurdling together with shivering fingers and freezing lips

Now I'm fighting with a loneliness

That slowly kills

There's nothing left for us to chart

Nothing left for us to say

Even thoughts are obsolete

When time has swallowed everything that was

It's too late to save us

Too late to find our way home again

Too late to be my journeyman

Inaudible Music

Why do we care what other people think of us? Are we that narrow-minded, as human beings, that we think it really matters? Are we even individuals, capable of thought and emotion, are we anything more than specks of dust against the universe? We strive and strive for an image of perfection that we'll never achieve, try so hard to maintain this image of ourselves as intelligent beings, while in essence we aren't much more than animals equipped with a certain level of self-consciousness. We're dependent on the world around us to even be able to breathe, we're dependent on the sun to be able to live our small, small lives. Our whole life's order is arranged after day and night cycles created as the world spins around its own axis. When we lie down in the grass and stare at a blue sky we're still staring into space, all stars visible at night hidden by the sun and disguised as a cloak of color and clouds. That man exists is a wonder in itself and yet all we can focus on are trivial things. When you think about it - what should one achieve with life? Is the meaning of life to be successful, to be liked and respected, to have a job and a house, to be free of drugs and addiction, to contribute to society? Why can't the meaning of life, viewed by the masses, be to fulfill your own dreams and to live by a code decided by your heart? When I think about how fragile man is, how easily we die, how easily we live, it seems foolish and primitive how people tend to turn the most insignificant things into problems weighing in heavily on their lives. I look at the people around me and watch them dance as though to inaudible music, watch them prance as though they could achieve immortality that way. They drink themselves senseless, backtalk eachother, sleep around, in every photo it's the same shallow story being told all over again. I can't even say I'm not like them, not even when I spend my time with friends and games and writing and other things I'd like to call intellectual. In the end I'm equally primitive and equally worried about what rumors run around, how others see me, and I adapt myself equally much to avoid being seen as out of place. We divide ourselves into groups of us and them when we're actually the very same. Who can control when their hearts bleed, who can grasp the emptiness with open arms? The same way we're all the same, all watching the stars and thinking of what infinity is like, one day we'll all die, and these moments will be gone. I don't want to spend my moments of consciousness, moments of awareness, moments of living and being a breathing, feeling creature, living up to other people's standards. I want to spend my moments being safe, expanding my train of thought, experimenting, discovering, learning. I want to spend my moments around people I trust, people with mindsets like my own, people who don't dwell in silly pictures they can't remember when they were taken.

POET IN THE JAR